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No Surprise Here - Tweeting Can Get You Fired
September 01, 2011 posted by Steve Brownstein
by Rhodri Marsden
The internet has brought about a head-on collision between our personal and professional lives. A neatly presented online CV outlining a calm approach to high-pressure situations might stand in stark contrast to a Flickr album featuring pictures of that person screaming at a police cordon.
A reputation for high standards of written communication might be compromised by misspelled, expletive-filled rants on Facebook.
Wary of being brought into disrepute by the online misdemeanours of employees, many companies implement social media policies that punish transgressors. It has reported that 8 percent of companies have dismissed people for inappropriate online behaviour.
But far less is heard about are those whose applications for new jobs fail because of things they’ve left visibly strewn around the net.
An American firm, Social Intelligence, is gaining a high profile following the launch of its web-based pre-employment screening service.
But the evidence suggests that the practice of digging up dirt online has quietly become endemic among employers; you might think that you’re being judged on the information you send them, but it might be the things you choose not to reveal that end up denying you the post. And you may never find out the real reason.
Social Intelligence has stated that its activities have very precise boundaries. A “deep trawl” is done through the last seven years of blog comments, forum contributions and even classified ads that might have been posted, along with any visible social media content.
From that data, a dossier is compiled of specific material that could be seen as dishonourable – eg racist language, mentions of drug-taking, photos of a sexually explicit nature, or references to weapon usage or other violence.
Those who’ve failed the Social Intelligence test include a person who made an online enquiry about a possible source of the pain reliever Oxycontin; past dossiers also included membership of borderline-racist Facebook groups such as “This is America – I shouldn’t have to press 1 for English”.
We can’t pretend that background checks are a startling innovation. Recruitment services base their decisions on more than just the positive information they’re handed; referees might be asked for personal opinions and professional insights to build up a better picture of a candidate.
But employers are increasingly aware of and keen to use the huge informational resource that social media serves up on a plate; all kind of information is in the public domain, and incredibly easy to find – particularly if the applicant has an unusual name.
As the chief executive of Social Intelligence has said, with something of a corporate shrug, “All we assemble is what’s publicly available on the internet today”. Nothing underhand going on here.
Of course, most people haven’t uploaded pictures and text to establish a body of data that could be used to microscopically analyse their attitudes towards everything from immigration to giving money to charity; most people have done it because they’ve been encouraged to do so by online companies dangling the carrot of friendship. Finding people who share your interests, rather than putting off prospective employers. But both are happening.
“This probably started around four years ago,” says Chris Purdy, director of Greenfield, a specialist recruitment business based in Luxembourg. “The appearance of LinkedIn and Xing changed the methodology of how we headhunt; if we wanted a quick reference, that became the first place to go. But HR departments don’t stop at LinkedIn.”
One might wonder what level of unacceptable behaviour would cause those departments to rule someone out of the running, but it’s clear that the more senior the role, the more scrutiny of the applicants.
“Your online reputation is part of your professional reputation,” says Purdy. “If, say, a man is going for a private banking post that puts him in charge of E200m portfolios, pictures of him wearing a thong at a stag do won’t go down well.”
Few users of social media would emerge from close analysis without some kind of stain on their character. Swearing, sarcasm and stupidity are rampant; we’re fallible human beings, after all.
With Social Intelligence trawling back over seven years of material, growing older and wiser doesn’t count, past indiscretions will come back to haunt us.
Mat Honan, an employee of the gadget-guide website Gizmodo, subjected himself to a Social Intelligence check which he failed, thanks to passing references to cocaine and ketamine on his blog.
But was he being judged unfairly? After all, someone following a spoof BNP Twitter account that satirises racist attitudes could mistakenly be labelled a racist, and a debauched post-party photo might have someone mistakenly tagged as being in it when they aren’t.
This isn’t an exact science; your online bill of health is down to the skill and judgment of whoever performs the diagnosis.
According to Angie Youels, who performs HR-related services for small start-up companies, the interest in digging for a bit of colour on a candidate is down to the increasingly unhelpful information from traditional sources. “Candidates know that they can find out what’s been said about them, so rather than give a reference, they tend to just give dates of employment. In the past they’d have given fuller details.”
Bearing this in mind, the airbrushed, one-dimensional and characterless profiles presented on sites like LinkedIn almost feel like an invitation for more invasive, exploratory digging.
But there’s a danger in digging too far. Companies will become aware of facts they’re legally not allowed to ask. Details of age, ethnicity or political views will inevitably surface – as might, say, a female candidate’s pregnancy. Once this information is known, it can’t be somehow forgotten.
Social Intelligence is keen to highlight the fact that its service keeps such information at arm’s length from the companies themselves; Mat Honan’s dossier, for example, had his face blacked out throughout so as not to reveal his race, while still detailing his past encounters with drugs.
“I think it would be wrong for someone to be influenced by the fact that a candidate held, say, different political views to theirs,” says Youels, “but that’s the danger – that people will be rejected for their stance on this or that.”
The answer, according to Alexandra Arnott, a director at Octopus, an IT recruitment specialist, is honesty and diligence. “We may become aware of private information or opinions of candidates that are not relevant to process. So we must adhere to a strict ethical code and use our judgment and experience to ensure no discrimination.”
The process of choosing someone to work for you has always and will always be based upon judgments.
If you have two CVs for a post, one listing “eating granola and doing yoga” as an interest, and the other mentioning membership of the Campaign for Real Ale, that information will register. A job that involves lots of post-work socialising might suit the beer-drinker better – but the granola fan might be angry that they lost out on that basis.
Yet that’s life; workplaces are full of people who don’t fit in perfectly with their colleagues, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that social media searches could give employers a better idea of how that person might slot in.
As Chris Purdy says, it’s human nature to be drawn to people with similar views as your own. “Someone with liberal views isn’t going to want to take on someone with strong right-wing views – or vice versa,” he says. “Most of us don’t put objectionable stuff out there. I don’t think it’s as big an issue as it’s made out to be.”
So are the gasps of horror in the US merely paranoia?
It’s possible that, in time, companies will find that the hours spent scouring the internet for personal information isn’t that productive, and that filters that gauge personal inclinations might work better.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide,” say those who are unconcerned about privacy issues, “you’ve got nothing to fear.” This clearly isn’t true; the prospect of our online presences being misjudged means that we might have nothing to hide, but something to fear.
One solution: monitor your social media profile actively, suppressing anything that might compromise you. Don’t indulge in cross-dressing – even for fun – or be photographed next to a load of marijuana plants. This, of course, may showcase you as being incredibly dull, but perhaps it’s better to be safe than sorry.
